The Chikamori Selfacy (A Reboot)
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Generation One
Chapter Six
"Life Around The Chikamori House" (Part Four)
McIrish Side of the Triplex
River was upstairs in her room along with Haruo as she was testing out the artists supplies. Together they had assembled her new easel and got it to function the way it was meant to. She planned to use her sketch done yesterday at the beach as a reference image for a beach scene done in oils that she hoped would look as alive as she'd managed to make it in sketch-form. The nice thing about pencil sketches was that not only were they good reference sources drawn from one's own artistic vision but also, as pencils, could be erased to correct a flaw. When she had to do the oil painting, she would get one chance to get a flawless painting.
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River was certainly enjoying the new tools of her artistic career choice. She looked over at Haruo who had his head buried in a notebook busily scrawling away. "You look busy, sweetheart." River commented.
"Yup", Haruo replied, a bit preoccupied with his task at hand, scribbling industriously, "I have an idea for a book..." he trailed off as he continued the movements of his pen on paper. Every so often, he'd pause, look as though he was cogitating a thought, then go back to scribbling more lines of prose. River grinned in response. Haruo had always been an A-student in English 12. His creative writing had always earned him in the high nineties if not a perfect score of one hundred percent of any graded creative writing assignment. His acumen for the written phrase was second to none. Evidently Haruo was serious about a writing career and doing everything that he could do to make it a reality.
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It would behoove them to get computers, River thought, when they had enough money to do so, and Haruo would need a large capacity hard drive in order to have enough space for all his research. But as far as MS-DOS was concerned that would be a problem. Frankly Wordperfect was starting to take market-share from WordStar and thus would dominate in a world that was starting to make the switch to IBM PC. River figured that would probably be the wise route to go.
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River smiled again to herself; already she was thinking as if they were together as a couple long-since married; that they were pooling their money together: it's not his money or my money; it's OUR money she thought. She looked at her finger surreptitiously so that Haruo wouldn't notice and wishing that there was a ring on that finger already. It was a pleasant thought to think of herself as already spoken for. Come to think of it, River had pondered that Haruo had been a bit cagey about his reasons for going downtown so early in the morning yesterday. Did he have something in his pocket? Well she'd just have to wait and not ruin his surprise. She wasn't certain for sure, but it had to be something.
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She had looked deep within herself to see if she could picture spending the rest of her life with him and her answer was a resounding YES with no hesitation at all. When he would pop the question; despite the witch of a mother in the background, he was worth it. And she would say "yes" wholeheartedly to linking her life with Haruo. He'd always been by her side; her constant friend for the past fifteen years so it was a natural progression from boyfriend/girlfriend to engaged-to-be-married and she was looking forward to moving along that path in their relationship.
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Haruo, on the other hand, was working his way through a rather tough part of his story, completely unaware of the conjugal thoughts trickling through the synapses of River's head. Furrowing his brow, he followed the outline that he'd so painstakingly prepared the night before. With the direction of the plot in place it was a matter of writing connect-the-dots and having his characters work towards the ending while he, as the author, got to throw in red-herrings, plot-twists and other malodorous situations to forestall the eventual demise of the villains in the story as well as a few of the protagonist's sidekicks along the way. Making sure to milk the suspense for as long as possible but to not have the plot course affected to the point where the plot got thrown out the window was certainly a problematic situation but that came with the territory of being a writer.
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River hoped that Haruo would have a successful career as a writer and she believed in him. After all, their family would need two incomes to make ends meet. They would work together as a team to make that a reality. River looked over with affection as she saw Haruo writing copious amounts of text in his notebook as he made progress through the novel he was penning. She thought that certainly was an industrious level of activity that he was exhibiting. She smiled again as she turned back to her own painting and continued to transfer details from her sketch at the beachside to the canvas in preparation for application of oils.
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By the time that they were hungry enough to take a break for a late brunch around two in the afternoon, River had managed to get the details and start to arrange the oil paint tubes in preparation for the palette. Her selection of paint that she chose was a selection of sand, blue, grey, greens and other selections of colours that would compliment the landscape she was planning on painting. The individual colours would line the edges while the center would be where the colours would mix in order to achieve gradient of colours to signify shadow or light on the surface of the object. A must for the palette was white since that would inevitably be mixed to create lighter solutions for a certain colour while black would darken the shade. And that was the constant difficulty with paints as you had to know what colour would mix with another to make a certain shade of purple or pink or whatever colour.
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River sighed; she'd insist that when they built their dream home that they have a dedicated studio so that they could keep all their crafts in that one area. Haruo would have his office where he could do his writing while she would have a cupboard in her space to store paints, thinners, canvases and other artist's items. To the side she would have a tablesaw and a router table so that she could custom frame her paintings. The thought of having such a place was appealing.
Chikamori's Side of the Triplex
At 6:30 in the afternoon, Mayumi stomped into the house, out of sorts and looking for a fight. Even though school was out Teacher Development Days were still in effect until the end of the month before she would be allowed to take her own summer holidays. If that wasn't irritating enough she had to contend with teacher evaluations that would determine if the faculty would retain the services of teachers who they found their teaching capabilities less than effective. To be called into the office of the district supervisor for Education and be told that they would be re-evaluating her performance as an educator this coming year if deciding to retain her services once her contract with that school was up was absolutely infuriating. Spot checks, as the age group of her students was too young to assign them evaluations of their own to complete as these would go beyond the "Did you like your teacher?" "Do you feel you learned something in her class?" All they'd get out of students barely past the age of preschool would be a wide-eyed nod and a " uh-huh" which would prove to be completely useless in any objective evaluation of a teacher's teaching abilities.
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But of course to a narcissist like Mayumi, this kind of thorough evaluation of her ability or lack of was abjectly humiliating and infuriating. What right did the foul-up of a school board administrator think he was doing subjecting her to humiliation like that? He was a lesser being than her. He should be grovelling at her feet in abject obeisance begging her to continue to teach those snivelling little toe-lickers. How dare he think he had the right to cast judgement upon her perfection; her flawless performance. Frankly they should all be begging her for pointers on how to keep their classrooms in check, considering the rabble that pervaded their classes. One could hear the cacophony three hall ways over. She'd shut them up in an instant and then they would all cower in fear. Oh she would remember this, District Supervisor Don Mahoney, just you wait you bloviated sack of excrement. You will rue the day you crossed Mayumi the Great and Powerful.
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She stomped into the living-room, heavy steps shaking the house, looking for her favourite scapegoat to persecute. She nearly screamed in outrage. Her miserable excuse for a kid had disappeared somewhere and was nowhere to be found for Mayumi to make his life an absolute misery. Thus she had no-one to take out her frustrations on which only served to put Mayumi in an even worse mood.
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Poor Yasunobu after stopping outside to pay the bills after returning from outside after a day of hard work trying to harvest the plants and make sure that the fruits were ready to be sold, walked into a shit-storm of epic proportions at around seven exactly. There was no excuse for jumping a hard-working Yasunobu like that but Mayumi did not care and she went off on him like a tactical nuclear warhead. What transpired was an argument that lasted three hours, which Fiona upon returning overheard and knocked gently on River's door to let her know that Haruo and River should prepare the extra room upstairs so that Haruo could stay the night. Fiona wasn't going to allow him to go back to a home that night that was in the midst of an argument that threatened to get violent.
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Yasunobu, by about the three and a half hour mark, had finally had enough. "Kusobaba!" He roared, "musuko zettai gomi ni atsukatte, boku ga anatanomikata naru to kitai sho-ka? Bakayaro ka? (Stupid woman, you treat our son like garbage, yet you expect me to back you? Are you stupid?)"
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Mayumi sputtered in outrage. She'd never been spoken like that to by her husband. She'd extremely miscalculated the fact that she'd thought of him as a milquetoast always willing to do her bidding. She shrieked, "Dōshita sonani boku ni hanasu ka! (How dare you speak in that way to me!)"
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"Aete, anata no musuko o jūbun gyakutai shita. Atama yokattanara, zutto mae ni anata to rikon surubeki ja, musuko o tsurete Nihon ni kairubeki ja ta.(I dare, you've abused your son enough. if I had been smart I'd have divorced you a long time ago and took my son with me back to Japan but that choice is no longer mine) Shikashi, sono sentaku mohaya boku no monode dewanai!"
Mayumi's look of hate was enough for Yasunobu,"aMohaya jibun jishin kappuru to minasanai koto saizandekin kara tabun, korekara wa betsu heya neru kata ii da ne. (It's better if we no longer consider ourselves a couple from now on and maybe it would be better if we slept in separate rooms)."
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"Kore wa wasurenai yo! (I'm not going to forget this!)". She screeched.
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"Kitai shinaide!" Yasunobu snapped, "(I wouldn't expect you to!)" and walked out of the living room and upstairs to pack his things in order to move his stuff out of the room that he formerly shared with Mayumi.
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Mayumi shook with rage, seeing red, stomping outside, she let out a screeching howl of anger. How dare this pathetic worm of a husband stand up to her; Mayumi the Great. Did the pathetic little louse realize just what he was doing? How dare he tell Mayumi that he was going to split up with her. She had expected to do that to him if anything. She was outraged that he had taken the initiative to move out of her room and into a private room at the other end of the second floor. Mayumi would have the entire room, Yasunobu had just vacated, to herself but that didn't appease her any. Where did he learn to have the backbone to stand up to her like that? She needed to find out and stamp it out before everyone else got the bright idea of rebellion. Mayumi was so enraged, she vowed to make Yasunobu’s and everyone else’s life a living hell.
By the time that Yasunobu retreated upstairs, Satoshi had come home from work, noting that Yasunobu was not usually sitting at the dinner table, he headed upstairs to find out what was the matter. Hearing noise coming from the spare bedroom, he poked his nose in the room. Mayumi was already in what was now her room sulking.
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"Nani ga okota node-ka? (Shpuld I ask what's going on?) Satoshi asked clearly rattled by the sight of his brother's now room and the possessions of his that he was slowly moving in to the room. He wondered what was going on as his brother looked rather angry and frustrated.
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"Mayumi to bunru suru. (I'm separating from Mayumi)" Yasunobu said shortly, but then elaborated. "Suiteiru san-kai shinshitsu idō suru to, kanojo ni-kai ni tomaru. (I will move to the third floor; she will stay on the second) Kanojo musuko hihan suru hodo boku gaman shinai. (My wife criticises my son and I won't put up with it.)"
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"Hihan suru? Karakatteru no. Tsuma anata no musuko o hihan shita dakedanai gyakutai shimashita, Yasukun! (Criticize? Are you kidding me? Your wife has been abusing your son, not just criticizing!)".
Yasunobu nodded, he knew that he had given Mayumi too much slack in her leash and in doing so; he'd created a monster who thought she was a goddess whodeserved to be exalted by all those around her and he was paying the price for his blindness.
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"Bunri yoi daiippodeahou. Musuko hahaoya ni gyakutai sarenai yō ni suru hitsuyō ne (Separation is a good first step but you're also going to have to make sure your son no longer has to be abused by his mother.), "Satoshi pointed out to his brother.
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"Watashi shi-teiru, Satoshi, Haruo; kare saru koto ga dekiru jidai ni chikazuiteru. Umaku ikeba, kare wa shin'yū to shiawase mitsukeru koto ga dekiru. (I know, Satoshi, Haruo is getting to the age where he is able to leave the nest. Hopefully he can find happiness with a close friend.)" Yasunobu said smiling a slow grin. "Kimochi ga aru River to issho ni nareba totte yoi pātonā desho. (i have a feeling that River, if they get together, will be a good partner for him)" Yasunobu thought after letting Satoshi know that hopefully, Haruo and River would figure it out for themselves.
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Satoshi was in agreement and he figured that Haruo and River were destined for each other. He'd seen how close the two of them were and that pairing was no coincidence. River had the strength and internal fortitude to stand up to anything Mayumi could dish out at them and that River would block any attempts of Mayumi's to get at her son. But it didn't stop him from wishing that Mayumi would meet her end in some painful fashion. It would be a fate for that evil hag that was richly deserved.
(End Chapter Six)
Generation One
Chapter Six
"Life Around The Chikamori House" (Part Four)
McIrish Side of the Triplex
River was upstairs in her room along with Haruo as she was testing out the artists supplies. Together they had assembled her new easel and got it to function the way it was meant to. She planned to use her sketch done yesterday at the beach as a reference image for a beach scene done in oils that she hoped would look as alive as she'd managed to make it in sketch-form. The nice thing about pencil sketches was that not only were they good reference sources drawn from one's own artistic vision but also, as pencils, could be erased to correct a flaw. When she had to do the oil painting, she would get one chance to get a flawless painting.
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River was certainly enjoying the new tools of her artistic career choice. She looked over at Haruo who had his head buried in a notebook busily scrawling away. "You look busy, sweetheart." River commented.
"Yup", Haruo replied, a bit preoccupied with his task at hand, scribbling industriously, "I have an idea for a book..." he trailed off as he continued the movements of his pen on paper. Every so often, he'd pause, look as though he was cogitating a thought, then go back to scribbling more lines of prose. River grinned in response. Haruo had always been an A-student in English 12. His creative writing had always earned him in the high nineties if not a perfect score of one hundred percent of any graded creative writing assignment. His acumen for the written phrase was second to none. Evidently Haruo was serious about a writing career and doing everything that he could do to make it a reality.
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It would behoove them to get computers, River thought, when they had enough money to do so, and Haruo would need a large capacity hard drive in order to have enough space for all his research. But as far as MS-DOS was concerned that would be a problem. Frankly Wordperfect was starting to take market-share from WordStar and thus would dominate in a world that was starting to make the switch to IBM PC. River figured that would probably be the wise route to go.
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River smiled again to herself; already she was thinking as if they were together as a couple long-since married; that they were pooling their money together: it's not his money or my money; it's OUR money she thought. She looked at her finger surreptitiously so that Haruo wouldn't notice and wishing that there was a ring on that finger already. It was a pleasant thought to think of herself as already spoken for. Come to think of it, River had pondered that Haruo had been a bit cagey about his reasons for going downtown so early in the morning yesterday. Did he have something in his pocket? Well she'd just have to wait and not ruin his surprise. She wasn't certain for sure, but it had to be something.
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She had looked deep within herself to see if she could picture spending the rest of her life with him and her answer was a resounding YES with no hesitation at all. When he would pop the question; despite the witch of a mother in the background, he was worth it. And she would say "yes" wholeheartedly to linking her life with Haruo. He'd always been by her side; her constant friend for the past fifteen years so it was a natural progression from boyfriend/girlfriend to engaged-to-be-married and she was looking forward to moving along that path in their relationship.
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Haruo, on the other hand, was working his way through a rather tough part of his story, completely unaware of the conjugal thoughts trickling through the synapses of River's head. Furrowing his brow, he followed the outline that he'd so painstakingly prepared the night before. With the direction of the plot in place it was a matter of writing connect-the-dots and having his characters work towards the ending while he, as the author, got to throw in red-herrings, plot-twists and other malodorous situations to forestall the eventual demise of the villains in the story as well as a few of the protagonist's sidekicks along the way. Making sure to milk the suspense for as long as possible but to not have the plot course affected to the point where the plot got thrown out the window was certainly a problematic situation but that came with the territory of being a writer.
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River hoped that Haruo would have a successful career as a writer and she believed in him. After all, their family would need two incomes to make ends meet. They would work together as a team to make that a reality. River looked over with affection as she saw Haruo writing copious amounts of text in his notebook as he made progress through the novel he was penning. She thought that certainly was an industrious level of activity that he was exhibiting. She smiled again as she turned back to her own painting and continued to transfer details from her sketch at the beachside to the canvas in preparation for application of oils.
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By the time that they were hungry enough to take a break for a late brunch around two in the afternoon, River had managed to get the details and start to arrange the oil paint tubes in preparation for the palette. Her selection of paint that she chose was a selection of sand, blue, grey, greens and other selections of colours that would compliment the landscape she was planning on painting. The individual colours would line the edges while the center would be where the colours would mix in order to achieve gradient of colours to signify shadow or light on the surface of the object. A must for the palette was white since that would inevitably be mixed to create lighter solutions for a certain colour while black would darken the shade. And that was the constant difficulty with paints as you had to know what colour would mix with another to make a certain shade of purple or pink or whatever colour.
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River sighed; she'd insist that when they built their dream home that they have a dedicated studio so that they could keep all their crafts in that one area. Haruo would have his office where he could do his writing while she would have a cupboard in her space to store paints, thinners, canvases and other artist's items. To the side she would have a tablesaw and a router table so that she could custom frame her paintings. The thought of having such a place was appealing.
Chikamori's Side of the Triplex
At 6:30 in the afternoon, Mayumi stomped into the house, out of sorts and looking for a fight. Even though school was out Teacher Development Days were still in effect until the end of the month before she would be allowed to take her own summer holidays. If that wasn't irritating enough she had to contend with teacher evaluations that would determine if the faculty would retain the services of teachers who they found their teaching capabilities less than effective. To be called into the office of the district supervisor for Education and be told that they would be re-evaluating her performance as an educator this coming year if deciding to retain her services once her contract with that school was up was absolutely infuriating. Spot checks, as the age group of her students was too young to assign them evaluations of their own to complete as these would go beyond the "Did you like your teacher?" "Do you feel you learned something in her class?" All they'd get out of students barely past the age of preschool would be a wide-eyed nod and a " uh-huh" which would prove to be completely useless in any objective evaluation of a teacher's teaching abilities.
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But of course to a narcissist like Mayumi, this kind of thorough evaluation of her ability or lack of was abjectly humiliating and infuriating. What right did the foul-up of a school board administrator think he was doing subjecting her to humiliation like that? He was a lesser being than her. He should be grovelling at her feet in abject obeisance begging her to continue to teach those snivelling little toe-lickers. How dare he think he had the right to cast judgement upon her perfection; her flawless performance. Frankly they should all be begging her for pointers on how to keep their classrooms in check, considering the rabble that pervaded their classes. One could hear the cacophony three hall ways over. She'd shut them up in an instant and then they would all cower in fear. Oh she would remember this, District Supervisor Don Mahoney, just you wait you bloviated sack of excrement. You will rue the day you crossed Mayumi the Great and Powerful.
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She stomped into the living-room, heavy steps shaking the house, looking for her favourite scapegoat to persecute. She nearly screamed in outrage. Her miserable excuse for a kid had disappeared somewhere and was nowhere to be found for Mayumi to make his life an absolute misery. Thus she had no-one to take out her frustrations on which only served to put Mayumi in an even worse mood.
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Poor Yasunobu after stopping outside to pay the bills after returning from outside after a day of hard work trying to harvest the plants and make sure that the fruits were ready to be sold, walked into a shit-storm of epic proportions at around seven exactly. There was no excuse for jumping a hard-working Yasunobu like that but Mayumi did not care and she went off on him like a tactical nuclear warhead. What transpired was an argument that lasted three hours, which Fiona upon returning overheard and knocked gently on River's door to let her know that Haruo and River should prepare the extra room upstairs so that Haruo could stay the night. Fiona wasn't going to allow him to go back to a home that night that was in the midst of an argument that threatened to get violent.
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Yasunobu, by about the three and a half hour mark, had finally had enough. "Kusobaba!" He roared, "musuko zettai gomi ni atsukatte, boku ga anatanomikata naru to kitai sho-ka? Bakayaro ka? (Stupid woman, you treat our son like garbage, yet you expect me to back you? Are you stupid?)"
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Mayumi sputtered in outrage. She'd never been spoken like that to by her husband. She'd extremely miscalculated the fact that she'd thought of him as a milquetoast always willing to do her bidding. She shrieked, "Dōshita sonani boku ni hanasu ka! (How dare you speak in that way to me!)"
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"Aete, anata no musuko o jūbun gyakutai shita. Atama yokattanara, zutto mae ni anata to rikon surubeki ja, musuko o tsurete Nihon ni kairubeki ja ta.(I dare, you've abused your son enough. if I had been smart I'd have divorced you a long time ago and took my son with me back to Japan but that choice is no longer mine) Shikashi, sono sentaku mohaya boku no monode dewanai!"
Mayumi's look of hate was enough for Yasunobu,"aMohaya jibun jishin kappuru to minasanai koto saizandekin kara tabun, korekara wa betsu heya neru kata ii da ne. (It's better if we no longer consider ourselves a couple from now on and maybe it would be better if we slept in separate rooms)."
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"Kore wa wasurenai yo! (I'm not going to forget this!)". She screeched.
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"Kitai shinaide!" Yasunobu snapped, "(I wouldn't expect you to!)" and walked out of the living room and upstairs to pack his things in order to move his stuff out of the room that he formerly shared with Mayumi.
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Mayumi shook with rage, seeing red, stomping outside, she let out a screeching howl of anger. How dare this pathetic worm of a husband stand up to her; Mayumi the Great. Did the pathetic little louse realize just what he was doing? How dare he tell Mayumi that he was going to split up with her. She had expected to do that to him if anything. She was outraged that he had taken the initiative to move out of her room and into a private room at the other end of the second floor. Mayumi would have the entire room, Yasunobu had just vacated, to herself but that didn't appease her any. Where did he learn to have the backbone to stand up to her like that? She needed to find out and stamp it out before everyone else got the bright idea of rebellion. Mayumi was so enraged, she vowed to make Yasunobu’s and everyone else’s life a living hell.
By the time that Yasunobu retreated upstairs, Satoshi had come home from work, noting that Yasunobu was not usually sitting at the dinner table, he headed upstairs to find out what was the matter. Hearing noise coming from the spare bedroom, he poked his nose in the room. Mayumi was already in what was now her room sulking.
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"Nani ga okota node-ka? (Shpuld I ask what's going on?) Satoshi asked clearly rattled by the sight of his brother's now room and the possessions of his that he was slowly moving in to the room. He wondered what was going on as his brother looked rather angry and frustrated.
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"Mayumi to bunru suru. (I'm separating from Mayumi)" Yasunobu said shortly, but then elaborated. "Suiteiru san-kai shinshitsu idō suru to, kanojo ni-kai ni tomaru. (I will move to the third floor; she will stay on the second) Kanojo musuko hihan suru hodo boku gaman shinai. (My wife criticises my son and I won't put up with it.)"
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"Hihan suru? Karakatteru no. Tsuma anata no musuko o hihan shita dakedanai gyakutai shimashita, Yasukun! (Criticize? Are you kidding me? Your wife has been abusing your son, not just criticizing!)".
Yasunobu nodded, he knew that he had given Mayumi too much slack in her leash and in doing so; he'd created a monster who thought she was a goddess whodeserved to be exalted by all those around her and he was paying the price for his blindness.
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"Bunri yoi daiippodeahou. Musuko hahaoya ni gyakutai sarenai yō ni suru hitsuyō ne (Separation is a good first step but you're also going to have to make sure your son no longer has to be abused by his mother.), "Satoshi pointed out to his brother.
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"Watashi shi-teiru, Satoshi, Haruo; kare saru koto ga dekiru jidai ni chikazuiteru. Umaku ikeba, kare wa shin'yū to shiawase mitsukeru koto ga dekiru. (I know, Satoshi, Haruo is getting to the age where he is able to leave the nest. Hopefully he can find happiness with a close friend.)" Yasunobu said smiling a slow grin. "Kimochi ga aru River to issho ni nareba totte yoi pātonā desho. (i have a feeling that River, if they get together, will be a good partner for him)" Yasunobu thought after letting Satoshi know that hopefully, Haruo and River would figure it out for themselves.
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Satoshi was in agreement and he figured that Haruo and River were destined for each other. He'd seen how close the two of them were and that pairing was no coincidence. River had the strength and internal fortitude to stand up to anything Mayumi could dish out at them and that River would block any attempts of Mayumi's to get at her son. But it didn't stop him from wishing that Mayumi would meet her end in some painful fashion. It would be a fate for that evil hag that was richly deserved.
(End Chapter Six)
